As indicated in commonly assigned Zenger et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,686,820, it is customary in the manufacture of many containers, e.g., cans, to make the main container body and container ends separately, the container ends then being packaged for shipment to various locations where the completed container is produced.
The above identified Zenger et al. patent discloses and claims an improved method and apparatus for automatically handling nestable articles, such as container ends. In particular, that patent is directed to a method and apparatus for arranging the disc-like articles or container ends in face-to-face relationship in a plurality of stacks and encasing the stacks in a film of flexible material. it is imperative that these stacks include at least a selected minimum number of container ends in order to insure that there are a sufficient number for producing the completed container.
In practice, the number of ends in a stack has been approximated, for example, by measuring the overall length of the stack, on the assumption that a stack of given dimension contains a certain number of ends. This assumption is only true as an approximation, since the number of ends in a stack of given length can vary depending on how tightly the ends are packed. It has been the practice, therefore, to add a few "extra" ends to the stack to insure that the stack contains the desired minimum number.
At production rates of about 2000-2200 ends per minute, which is typical, these "extras" can result in a substantial cost override since the customer is billed only for the number of ends that are supposed to be in the stack. Even so, the cost of the "extra" ends has been less than the time and expense required to accurately count ends for each stack.
The desirability of eliminating these excess costs by accurately and efficiently counting ends for each stack without cutting production speed requires no elaboration.